Nina Power poses some interesting questions about the centrality of work in our society (In search of a new slogan, 29 July). She is critical of the Right to Work campaign for focusing on workers and unions and argues that our slogan plays into the idea that "work is the ultimate mark of a man or, in more recent decades, a woman too".
I agree we need to fight for a world where work, far from dominating and oppressing our lives, becomes something rewarding for humanity and our planet, something liberating and enjoyable. But in the meantime fear of losing one's job, management bullying, unpaid overtime, work "experience", long hours and fewer breaks are the reality of the lives of many women and men.
In resisting the austerity measures of the coalition government, our campaign aims to unite those in work with those not working, pensioners, students, disability campaigners and all of us who rely on public services.
Power argues that "the model of work presupposed by Right to Work is a worthy, classical one". Yet at our conference in May, attended by over 600, our contributors included migrant workers leading campaigns among cleaners, and young people who have organised in the call centres and supermarkets where they work.
My experience of 30 years as an active trade unionist is that it is in struggles such as these that people discover that fighting to defend what we have is not enough, and start looking for answers.
As Power says: "Thinking of a world with less but better work, or even no work at all (as we currently understand it), particularly in the midst of an economic crisis, is impractical, of course. Yet thinking about alternatives to the current system, however unfathomable, may help us to break with much that is wrong about our everyday existence."
Our campaign has debated how the battle to defend jobs and services can be linked to an alternative vision where we are not just expected to pay the price of economic crisis. In the case of the Visteon car component plant closure, the debate about what socially and environmentally useful role the factory could perform was a feature of that fight. At the Vestas wind turbine factory, anyone could see the insanity of allowing Britain's only wind turbine manufacturer to be axed. That struggle helped build the popularity of the campaign for a million green jobs.
We do need a debate about alternatives, including the right not to work. But government plans to "simplify" benefits will be another way of forcing people into whatever work they can get.
So, in the immediate term, Power is right to say we are about resisting "attacks on jobs and services" plus "pay cuts, worsening conditions and pension reform". That is why we will be demonstrating outside the Tory party conference in October. I hope Power will be there, along with all those who don't want to accept what is being dished out to us.
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